ASP™ - Advanced Stroke Processor

The ALPS™ system is capable of computing & displaying real-time lightning location information, archiving this data for historical analysis, allowing remote reconfiguration of the sensors and resuming operations automatically after a power outage.  It also provides solution data in a format that allows the client to add the data to its master meteorological archive system and further distribute the data to its clients for further exploitation.  The lightning data analysis and processing system which handles these tasks is called the Advanced Stroke Processor (ASP™).
The ASP™, which includes all the required location software, as well as archive, maintenance and network monitoring applications, can be installed on a network at the client's operational centers, together with PC-based lightning displays at each site.  The main ASP™ processor software is compiled to run on a Windows Server operating system. (Please contact TOA Systems Inc. for incofmation on Unix based ASP)

Advanced Stroke Processor ASP™ Functional Overview

The ASP™ (Advanced Stroke Processor) is the heart and brain of the lightning location system.  The system processes sensor data to calculate where lightning has occurred.  After the data is processed, the results are sent to various communication ports which users can connect to, in order to retrieve and display solution and housekeeping data.  The ASP™ allows a user to modify or add additional sensors.  Such changes are carried out through the CentralGUI program.  Furthermore, earlier designed sensors such as some LPATS receivers can also be connected to the ASP™ with an indication of sensor type input through the CentralGUI program.
The primary function of the network’s Central Processing System (ASP™) is to calculate the location of lightning in latitude and longitude coordinates to an accuracy of 0.0001 degrees.  The data will then be distributed real time to users for display purposes as well as to an archive system, known as  ALDA™.  The ASP™ normally is programmed to process the location and distribute the data in less than 10 seconds.  This number can be reduced if required by changing the configuration file entry.

The Advanced Stroke Processor connects to the external Precision Lightning Sensors (PLS™) via direct connect, serial or TCP/IP communication lines.  When three or more PLS™ sensors notify ASP™ that a transmission has occurred, ASP™ attempts to mathematically determine the transmission origin using a Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) algorithm.  If the TDOA algorithm produces a solution, the solution and other pertinent stroke information is transmitted to the SQL Data Server Windows.